"Explore the Flavors" wandering on the streets

to sample A To Z International Street Food. Yes, this April 2018, I will be featuring Street Foods across the globe in A to Z English Alphabetical order.

While I announced the "Explore the Flavours" theme on the site during Jan, we had it finalized many months ago. However, sometime during the process, I realized that when I do Mega BM on Spice your Life! I completely ignore my Cooking 4 all Seasons space.

This time I decided to do another theme in that space. The Sub clause for this theme was that either we can pick one topic for the whole month or pick 4 topics. So go check out what I have done in Cooking 4 all Seasons.

One important thing that really made me very happy was the fact that I was able to pick a dish for all Alphabets without using any of our regular BM clauses.

If you are landing here for the first time, just to update you, we are a group of Food Bloggers doing a Blogging Marathon every month for 4 weeks doing 3 days each month. However, during April and September, we do 26 days of nonstop blogging, with Sundays off.

We have been doing the Mega Blogging Marathon since April 2013,

April 2013 was weekly themes.
September 2013 was ABC Cooking
April 2014 was Indian Food Odyssey
September 2014 was Around the world in 30 days
April 2015 was Fire up our Ovens
September 2015 was a Buffet On Table
April 2016 was a Journey through the Cuisines
September 2016 was Cooking Carnival!
April 2017 was AtoZ Baking around the World
September 2017 was Protein Rich Dishes (My choice was AtoZ Bengali Sweets)

All about A To Z International Street Food planning

Coming to this Edition, even when I was planning the different themes to pick for this Mega BM, I knew I will have to do Street Food. It's one of my favourite topics and while I may not be able to typically replicate a street food, given that most are nonveg based, I have tried my best to keep the base of each dish in intact and just substituted the meat in many of the dishes.

During the thinking process, when I was updating the sheet I maintain, I suddenly realised that I will be letting my Cooking 4 all Seasons lay unattended every time I do a Mega BM here. That's when I thought I should see if I could do the same Mega over there as well.

What came up was something so interesting that, as I write here now, more of those dishes are done than the Street food I took upon myself. Even though I started way back in January with cooking some dishes back then, the whole Mega BM cooking got slow because of the regular BM that I am always so unprepared. As always the latter part of the dishes got done and I found myself hurrying with the first week dishes.

Excepting a couple of letters, I have made sure not to repeat a country. And yes, I haven't used any of the clause we have for some of the tough alphabets, I was lucky enough to find some popular street food with those as well!

Though I had to redo some, I was also able to pair some dishes with the other theme on C4AS. Which, I felt was too cool to think about. The best part was sharing it with my kids and making them enjoy some of the dishes they could try. Konda had all of these and was so thrilled as always. Since she was busy with her exams, she wasn't able to help much with the cooking or clicking process. She has said she all set to takeover clicking part during her vacation!

I am known for my marathon cooking that I do on the weekends. And it was no different this time too. I always plan and plot the cooking, having similar dishes done in one shot. So when I started cooking for the Mega BM in March, it was about 8 to 9 dishes in one go, plus I had the Thali going on for Sunday. On Monday, my fridge would be so full of leftovers, that I worry only then!

I have happily shared these with my neighbours and colleagues who are only too happy to savour the new tastes. While at the moment I still have to cook half the list, I am happy I have picked up this theme.

Thanks for the crazy bunch of friends I have in my group who push me to do more than I can ever do!